A web search query tends to have the most relevant results when the retrieval matches the user's language and takes into account her physical location. Therefore, it is common for search engines to use a language-market or language-region pair that matches closely the query language and location. Typically, a search engine only returns (i.e. ranks on top positions) those search results having the same language as the query and the query results that are from within the same region in which the user of the query is located. However, for a class of queries, search results and their relevance can be improved by leveraging results from other language-region pairs. This is particularly true for content poor languages whose total content may be minute compared to global web contents.
This is also true for countries where multiple languages are spoken, such as the United States, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. In the U.S., for example, studies have shown that bi-lingual users are on the rise which blurs the line between primary and secondary languages. Also in Egypt, many people speak English beside Arabic.
However, routinely issuing queries to multiple languages and/or regions in order to improve the relevance of the search results introduces significant processing delays and overheads.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the problems mentioned above.